This invention relates generally to the handling of crop material packages produced by crop bale forming machines. Specifically, it is concerned with apparatus which work in conjunction with crop bale forming machines to facilitate the handling of large bales of crop material, such as round bales.
Historically, it has been the custom to harvest forage crops by mowing the crops, letting them dry in the field, forming the dried crop material into windrows and passing a hay baling machine over and along those windrows to form the crop material into rectangular bales. Recent practice has shown that the formation of crop materials into large compact rolls, rather than small rectangular bales as was formerly done, permitted the crop material to be deposited in roll form and left in fields for extended periods of time since the rolled material tends to provide a self-shedding protective covering from inclement weather. The ability to leave these rolled bales in fields thus obviated the additional steps of gathering the rectangular bales and transporting them to a storage area protected from the elements.
The increasing popularity of crop roll forming machines has been their use broaden from rolling wintering forage for livestock to rolling high protein crops, such as alfalfa, for dairy livestock. Despite the excellent weathering characteristics of these large crop rolls, it is still necessary, in most instances, to transport these rolls form their field storage locations at least relatively short distances to livestock feeding locations. Since the crop rolls are formed into large round bales normally ranging in weight from approximately 600 to 1500 pounds, in axial length from approximately 41/2 to 51/2 feet, and in diameter from approximately 41/2 to 6 feet, efficient handling methods are essential in order to make the large round bale handling system feasible as a one-man hay harvesting and handling system for large scale farming operations. Since the size of these bales does not permit their being handled by the manual labor of several persons, much less one person, various mechanical means for handling them have been developed.
One method for handling large round bales involves a single bale handling unit, such as a 3-point hitch tractor mounted rear end loader or a tractor mounted front end loader. These single bale handling units have proven adequate for a farmer with a small scale round bale handling operation. However, such units are uneconomical and inefficient for farming operations involving large numbers of round bales which must be removed from the field and transported to relatively distant feed lots or outdoor storage areas, and then further handled at such storage areas to complete the livestock feeding operations.
Another bale handling method, therefore, has evolved utilizing an efficient and economical round bale handler to move a number of crop material packages. The introduction of large round bale handling apparatus, such as the type shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,966,063, dated June 29, 1976 to Campbell et al, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,019,644, continuation application dated Apr. 26, 1977 to Seymour, have enabled the large round bale method of hay harvesting to develop into a completely automatic, substantially one-man harvesting and handling system. Further improvements in large round bale handlers, as described and illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 3,951,288 dated Apr. 20, 1976 to Hale et al and U.S. Pat. No. 3,952,895, dated Apr. 27, 1976 to Campbell, have permitted large round bale handling to advance along with the now extensive commercial acceptance of round baling machines.
This increasingly wide spread usage of large round bale handlers has lead to substantially one-man harvesting and handling systems being utilized in varying geographical locations and under diversified farming conditions. Consequently, these geographical and conditional variables have presented new problems in the implementation of the integrated one-man harvesting and round bale handling system. One of these problems manifested itself in farming areas that have crop fields with steep slopes and rolling hills. Round bales ejected from a momentarily halted round baling machine in these areas have the potential to roll down a hillside when the windrows are formed in a pattern that takes them up and down the terrain's gradient. Additionally, fenced crop fields present handling problems since the outside two windrows of cut crop material, once formed into large round bales by the baling machines, are oriented in the wrong direction to permit fast and economical one-man handling by the type of round bale handlers described above.
The foregoing problems are solved in the design of the apparatus comprising the present invention by essentially orienting the completed crop material packages in a direction that enhances their stability and permits their easy retrieval and transport by multiple large round bale handlers.